Monthly Archives: July 2019

Gell-Mann equivalent for politics?

To quote the originator of the term, Michael Crichton, The Gell-Mann Effect is:

“Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward–reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story–and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.

But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”

End quote. Is there an equivalent for politics? We are quite willing to believe the most horrible and devious behavior of THAT party, but while our own party may have a few flawed individuals, it’s not in any way systemic… all the evidence is simply individualized, atomized, anecdotal, and anomalous, not generalized. Even when the evidence is that the leadership of both sides is utterly corrupt and controlled is overwhelming.

Random thought on freedom

Facebook is a social media platform.

Facebook proposed its own crypto-currency, the Libra.

Facebook often locks people out of their accounts, or suspends them indefinitely, for posting things they deem “problematic.”

Would that constitute theft if said locked-out user had any Libra crypto he couldn’t access? Or, as an alternative construction, would using Libra, even a small amount of it, force FB to play fair and not ever lock you out of your FB account (because presumably you need to log in to FB to actually use Libra).